


Anywhere the Wind Blows

by paperstorm



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Cabin Fic, Canadian Wilderness, Christmas, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Ex-Army Bucky Barnes, Falling In Love, Firefighter Steve Rogers, First Kiss, First Time, Lumberjack Steve Rogers, M/M, Marvel Trumps Hate 2019, POV Steve Rogers, Physical Disability, Romance, There Is Only One Bed, descriptions of body disfigurement, he's not actually a lumberjack he just chops a lot of wood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27717299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: After a catastrophic fire that shakes him to his core, Steve Rogers quits his job as a Brooklyn firefighter and relocates to a cabin in the remote Canadian wilderness, wanting quiet and solitude and to maybe never have to speak to another human being ever again. He gets his wish, more or less, until a recently injured Bucky Barnes is discharged from the Army and rents the cabin next door.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 65
Kudos: 471
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2019





	Anywhere the Wind Blows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrishArgh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrishArgh/gifts).



> My lovely MTH bidder has been SO patient, waiting literally a year for me to get my butt in gear and write this <3 thanks Trish you're the best.
> 
> Title is from this lyric, that felt really right for this story, from the song Windmills by Toad the Wet Sproket  
>  _There's something that you won't show, waiting where the light goes / Maybe anywhere the wind blows, it's all worth waiting for_
> 
> Many thanks to my beta [Ignisentis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ignisentis/pseuds/Ignisentis) for quick work and great suggestions!

The first snowfall of the year is always Steve’s favorite.  
  
It often doesn’t last. The sun will still warm the unfrozen ground in mid-November so the gathering of fluffy snowflakes will sparkle throughout the forest for a couple of hours at most before they melt away and leave the world around him glistening, but he likes it all the same. He likes winter, always has, and these initial teases of it have him excited for the coming months where everything he can see will be white and glittery and he can lock himself away in his cabin with a fire and a book and use the sub-zero temperatures as a perfectly valid excuse to avoid other humans for days on end.  
  
He doesn’t dislike the residents of the little town down the road. Gil at the grocery store is always helpful. Monica at the coffee shop near the water is endlessly friendly and has never once asked about Steve’s past even though it can’t be very usual for a single man in his 30s to move alone to a town like this with no reason he’s willing to talk about. He doesn’t dislike them at all, but he’d moved up here for solitude and he enjoys the chance to revel in it.  
  
He’ll need wood, he thinks as he peers out the window at his woodshed at the side of the cabin, if winter is on its way. Strictly speaking, it isn’t legal to cut down trees on provincially owned land. Strictly speaking, Steve doesn’t really care, but he’d still rather not invite the attention that law-breaking would bring, so he scours the woods for trees that have fallen, or still-standing ones that have died and will fall at some point anyway. When he can’t find any, he orders firewood from a local company, but prefers to find it himself where he can.  
  
He pulls his boots and a light jacket on near the door. It isn’t that cold, yet, and walking in the afternoon sun always heats him. His property sparkles and he squints in the bright light as he leaves his cabin, traipsing around the side of it to retrieve an axe next to the dwindling woodpile. Sometimes he wishes he had a dog, to accompany him on these missions. Maybe he’ll look into that. There isn’t a shelter in the town, it’s much too small, but there would be at least one in the larger city an hour to the West.  
  
The forest is quiet, other than the crunch of the fresh snow under his boots. In the summer months it’s brimming with life, deer and racoons, wolves howling in the night, birds of all kinds that noisily sing from dawn ‘til dusk, but most of them will have migrated South by now so Steve is alone with his footsteps and the occasional squirrel darting up the trunk of a tree. He does find a fallen tree, maybe half a mile away from his property’s edge, and he grins to himself and approaches it.  
  
He raps against the side of it with his bare knuckles. It’s solid and dry, dead long enough that most of the moisture has left it and it isn’t squishy like trunks can get when they’ve been infiltrated by ants. It will make perfect firewood, and a lot of it. He’ll have to make several trips with his sled to collect it all, but he has nothing better to do today. He lifts the axe above his head and swiftly brings it down, the blade connecting with a satisfying crack against the base of the tree. Six more times he hacks at it, before it splits where he’s been chopping and he can set about removing the excess branches and bundling them up for kindling.  
  
“Who’s there?”  
  
Steve jumps, started by the voice. He looks around quickly, axe still gripped in his right hand, but sees nothing but trees and snow and one solitary Nuthatch on the bough of an evergreen tree a few yards in front of him. Surely the bird hasn’t learned to speak.  
  
“Uh, my name’s Steve,” he answers, feeling idiotic to be speaking to someone he can’t see – or maybe to no one at all. Maybe he’s losing his mind, that last concussion he’d suffered before he moved out here finally catching up with him. The doctors said he would be fine, but it wouldn’t be the first time they’d been wrong.  
  
“What are you doing, Steve?” the voice asks. It’s low and suspicious, and accompanied by the sound of footsteps, and Steve whirls around and finally locates its source.  
  
The first thing he sees is the gun. A shotgun, illegal by the look of the roughly altered barrel, pointing right at him from behind. It’s held in the hand of a man about his size, maybe only slightly less broad in the shoulders, with long brown hair and wildly menacing blue eyes.  
  
“Hey, easy!” Steve cries. He holds the axe up so the man can clearly see it, can see that he isn’t intending to use it as a weapon.  
  
“What are you doing?” the man asks again, more pointedly this time and with the sardonic raise of an eyebrow.  
  
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Steve returns angrily, trying to keep his temper in check because one of them has a gun and the other doesn’t, but annoyed all the same. He doesn’t appreciate being threatened when all he’s trying to do is collect firewood.  
  
“It looks like you’re stealing,” the man answers.  
  
“Stealing what, a dead tree? Did you want it?”  
  
“No. But it’s still not your property.”  
  
Steve narrows his eyes. The man has a square jaw and sharp cheekbones and, Steve notices belatedly, only one arm. The other sleeve of his dark green sweatshirt hangs limply at his side, nothing but air filling it. The shotgun suddenly makes more sense, even though they’re illegal in Canada. More difficult to fire a hunting rifle with only one hand.  
  
“It’s not your property, either,” Steve tells him. He drops his hands back to his sides, removing them from the surrendering position they’d been in, but keeps the wooden handle of the axe squeezed in the circle of his fingers.  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“Because I live just over there.” Steve points to the left, in the direction of his cabin. From where they’re standing now it isn’t visible, and neither is the smaller cottage up the hill, but Steve knows where the property lines start and stop. “This land belongs to the Starks, and they only come here in the summer. And I have an agreement with Howard that if I find any fallen trees I’m allowed to take them.”  
  
The man narrows his eyes. “You know Howard?”  
  
“We’re neighbors,” Steve reiterates, very quickly losing his patience with being interrogated at gunpoint. “Could you put the weapon down?”  
  
“You first.” The man points the butt of the gun toward the axe in Steve’s hand and he rolls his eyes but complies, setting it down into the snow. Once he stands back upright, the man finally lowers the gun. It doesn’t escape Steve’s notice that his finger doesn’t leave the trigger, even as he holds the gun at his side instead of out in front of him.  
  
“Do you always wander the woods pointing sawed-off shotguns at strangers, or is it just my lucky day?”  
  
The man’s mouth curves into a small smile, but not a happy one. “I was minding my business, out on the front porch enjoying the sun, when you started hacking at a tree on my front lawn.”  
  
“And your first thought was, what, the Russians are invading?”  
  
“Maybe.” His expression betrays nothing, nothing that is of use to Steve, anyway.  
  
“So, you’re staying at the Stark’s place, then,” he concludes.  
  
Again, he offers only, “maybe.”  
  
“Or you broke into the Stark’s place with an illegal firearm, and I should call the cops on you.”  
  
The man narrows his eyes, but Steve’s thinly veiled threat has its desired effect. “No, I didn’t break in. I rented it from them for the winter. I’ve got paperwork.”  
  
“I’m sure you do.” Steve leans down to scoop the axe back up. The man watches him closely, and his finger twitches on the trigger of his gun, but other than that he remains motionless. Steve begins to trudge away without another word, but the man calls after him.  
  
“You can have the tree, if you want.”  
  
“I know I can, it doesn’t belong to you,” Steve calls back, over his shoulder, without fully turning around or breaking his stride.  
  
* * *  
  
He does go back for the tree, a few hours later when he feels smugly like he’s made his point. He doesn’t see the man again, although he has no way of knowing whether he’s somewhere lurking nearby, watching Steve split the large trunk into smaller, more manageable pieces and loading them up into his sled. Steve’s not sure he would care, if the stranger were watching. But he’s not sure he wouldn’t. It’s a confusing, itchy feeling under his skin. He’s usually so isolated out here, especially in the winter. He’s not thrilled at the idea of someone living next door for the rest of the season.  
  
* * *  
  
A week later, he sees the man again. Instead of sneaking up on him with a gun in the woods, this time it’s at the grocery store in town. There’s only one, and the next-closest is almost an hour away in Kenora, so it was bound to happen sooner or later, but Steve still jumps a little when he looks up from the cans of condensed soup he’d been examining and catches the icy blue eyes he remembers staring right at him from the next aisle.  
  
“Oh,” he says, stupidly.  
  
The man doesn’t answer. He looks at Steve just for a moment, and one corner of his mouth twitches, but then he moves on with his basket. Steve watches him out of the corner of his eye, watches as the stranger has to continually set the basket on the ground in order to pick items off the shelves with his single hand.  
  
Steve pays for his small stack of cans and a few fresh vegetables and deposits them into the backseat of his truck, and then he tucks his bare hands into his pockets and jogs across the road and down the hill. He gets an instant, blinding smile from Monica as he enters the coffee shop on the frozen marina in a flurry of snowflakes.  
  
“Wicked out there, isn’t it?” she asks as he approaches the glazed particleboard counter.  
  
“Incredibly,” he agrees. He shakes the snow from his hair. Outside the front window, the wind whips by, rattling the roof of the old house.  
  
“What can I get you?”  
  
“Just coffee,” Steve says, grinning as she says it with him in time, repeating his usual order. He could very easily make _just coffee_ at home, and often he does, but he hasn’t become _so_ much of a recluse that he hates a bit of interaction now and then, and he likes to support the local businesses. It’s such a small town, and almost completely devoid of tourist traffic in the colder months.  
  
He makes small talk as she pours a dark roast into a to-go cup without asking – he always takes it to-go. He pays with a handful of coins and grins at her politely as he takes his coffee from her warm hand. As he’s turning to leave, the door behind him opens again, and the man emerges once the flurries fall to the floor.  
  
They blink at each other. Tension crackles between them across the small room, as if they really despise each other even though they’ve only had a single conversation. Or maybe it doesn’t, maybe Steve is imagining it all, making a larger deal in his head out of their encounter than it was.  
  
He nods politely at the man as he walks toward him and the door, and they sidestep around each other so Steve can pass.  
  
“Hey, do you – can I buy you a muffin or something?”  
  
Steve frowns and turns back. “What?”  
  
There is a funny look on the man’s face, uncomfortable, almost sheepish, and he shrugs a shoulder and elaborates, “I feel bad, kinda, for scaring you the other day.”  
  
“You didn’t scare me,” Steve says immediately, irritated at the idea of anyone thinking that’s what had happened even though it’s only the two of them and the owner of the coffee shop in here, and Steve really doesn’t know her very well. She’s currently looking between the two of them with widened eyes like they’re a tennis match.  
  
“Or whatever. It’s fine if you don’t … whatever, I just thought I’d try to be nice.”  
  
Steve frowns at him. He studies the man’s face, his sharp cheekbones, the cleft of his chin almost hidden under dark brown stubble, his brilliantly blue eyes. Searches for evidence of insincerity, but he finds none. The man looks cautiously guarded, and maybe a little uncomfortable, but not like he’s lying or trying to trick Steve somehow.  
  
“Alright,” he agrees cautiously. He doesn’t particularly care for baked goods, but it would be nice to know the stranger with the gun living next door isn’t actively plotting his murder over semi-stolen firewood.  
  
He hovers awkwardly by the door as the man orders a caramel macchiato and two blueberry muffins, and watches Monica froth the milk and prepare the espresso and place the muffins into two separate paper bags. The man holds one out to him as he walks closer, and Steve takes it and thanks him.  
  
Wordlessly, awkwardly, they leave the shop together and follow the snowy path toward the parking lot.  
  
“I’m sorry about the gun,” the man says.  
  
_Alright_ , Steve thinks, _so we’re doing this_. Wishing it wasn’t as cold out as it is, but willing to overlook that and get this over with because it would be far more awkward to ask the man if they could go back inside where they could be overheard, Steve looks at him. “Forget about it. It’s fine.”  
  
“I didn’t realize there was another cabin so close,” the man explains sheepishly. “You can’t see it at all, from mine, the trees are too thick. When I heard something traipsing through the brush I thought it was a bear.”  
  
Steve nods. If he’s telling the truth, it’s not an unreasonable assumption. “Okay. Well I won’t sneak up on you again.”  
  
“I was, uh.” The man scrunches up his nose in a way that makes him look boyish. “In the army. Sometimes I get … I don’t like surprises.”  
  
Steve hadn’t given thought, until just now, to how he might have lost his arm, but the explanation makes him consider it, and the things his mind conjures make his stomach clench a little. “Retired firefighter,” he says, gesturing to himself. “I know that’s not exactly the same, but I’ve seen a lot of shit, too.”  
  
The man nods. Something softens in his eyes, even as he shivers and draws his shoulders up closer to his ears against the chill of the wind. “I’m Bucky. I mean James. Or – Bucky, I guess.”  
  
Steve frowns but at the same time, can’t help but press his lips together to stifle a smile. “Steve. I – so wait, what do you want me to call you?”  
  
Bucky-James considers it for a moment, and then decides on, “James.”  
  
“Nice to formally meet you, James. Sorry to be rude, and thanks for the muffin, but I’m freezing my nuts off, do you mind if I head back to my truck now?”  
  
“Oh, yeah, of course,” James says, cheeks reddening.  
  
Steve smiles at him and nods again, and heads back across the road.  
  
* * *  
  
For three days, Steve doesn’t leave his own property. It snows again, at least half a foot of it, completely blanketing the forest in powdery white that glitters like diamonds when the sun shines. He spends his mornings tackling idle jobs – there’s always something to be done, a section of the roof to be re-shingled, a railing spoke to be replaced, a patch of ice forming in a place where it would do damage in the spring if he left it untended. He spends the afternoons on his wide deck, or down by the quickly-freezing lake, soaking up the late-November sun. It’s quiet, except for the crackle of the ice as it forms on the lake. Peaceful, but for the very first time since Steve moved up here last year from Brooklyn, he feels something strange in his chest that after he thinks about it, he recognizes as a distant pang of loneliness.  
  
Rather than examine it, he heads back up to the cabin. He switches his footwear, from his clunky winter boots to his slimmer hiking boots with the cleats on the soles to stabilize him in case it’s icy, and heads out to the gravel road that connects his property with the main highway. He jogs, up it’s steep hills and along winding twists, frigid air burning as it enters his lungs and leaving ice crystals on the hairs of his beard as he exhales it. The pounding of his steps in the snow and the quickened beating of his heart takes him out of his head, clears his mind of any unwelcome thoughts of his past or future that might be swirling around in it.  
  
He runs to the highway and then turns around and runs back. Lungs and muscles aching from use and from the cold, he feels blissfully calm and unable to focus on anything but putting one foot in front of the other, until a figure appears around a bend in the road. It’s definitely human-shaped, not a bear or a wolf, but Steve falters anyway. Blinking tears from the wind out of his eyes, he distinguishes broad shoulders and long hair, turned white with frost as Steve’s sure his own is. The other man slows his pace as well, but once they’ve recognized each other they approach.  
  
“We had the same idea,” James says, gesturing to Steve’s feet.  
  
Steve notices similar strap-on cleats over his shoes. “Nice day,” he says, feeling stupid about it the second the words leave his lips. He’s never really been good at small-talk, and the few townspeople he’s become acquainted with over the last year seem to either not notice, or be kind enough to pretend they don’t.  
  
James nods. “It is.”  
  
Steve presses his lips together and nods. “How are you, uh, settling in?”  
  
“Good, yeah. It’s really something, out here. Nothing like anything I’m used to back home.”  
  
“Where’s home?”  
  
“Brooklyn.”  
  
Steve blinks and stares at him, convinced for a moment he must have heard wrong. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah, why?” James frowns, mouth turning down at the edges as he regards Steve warily.  
  
“Me too,” Steve tells him. “Lived in Bay Ridge all my life, until last year.”  
  
James blows out a breath. It forms to clouds in front of his face as he laughs quietly and shakes his head. “Well, that’s fuckin’ weird. What are the odds?”  
  
“No idea, gotta be pretty slim.”  
  
“For real. So, what happened last year?” James asks. When Steve cocks his head to one side in confusion, asking wordlessly for clarification, James says, “you spent your whole life in Brooklyn and then moved to an isolated cabin in the Canadian wilderness. Why?”  
  
“Oh,” Steve says. He hesitates, and in the briefest of pauses, James’ face changes, a horrified expression taking over the one of innocent curiosity.  
  
“Oh, fuck, I’m – you don’t have to tell me that,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it.” Steve shakes his head, and waves a gloved hand dismissively in front of himself.  
  
“I shouldn’t – I mean,” James huffs another laugh, this one frustrated instead of bemused. He tilts his own head to one side, nodding it toward the sleeve of his blue parka that hangs limply in the lack of an arm. “I’ve got my own … y’know? You don’t need to tell me anything.”  
  
Steve chews at the inside of his cheek, something warm and sympathetic expanding within his chest. “Ex-army?” he says, remembering James tell him that, but not wanting to pry, especially since he’d declined to tell the man his own story of running away to the most remote place he could think of that would still have access to running water and food he could buy instead of hunt.  
  
“Yeah.” James doesn’t elaborate, so Steve doesn’t ask him to.  
  
Their eyes meet, and something of an understanding passes between them. They’re both here running from something and maybe there’s a bit of camaraderie in that. Steve can’t say he hates it. He left Brooklyn in a haze of grief and anger and in that moment hadn’t wanted to see or speak to another living human ever again, but after a year mostly alone, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to occasionally converse with someone who’s been through something similar.  
  
He can tell, even without saying it, that James feels the same.  
  
“I’m gonna …” James gestures down the path. “Have a good rest of your run.”  
  
“Yeah, you too,” Steve nods and smiles at him, and for the first time since they met it feels like a real smile.  
  
They pass each other and carry on in opposite directions, but they’re only a few yards apart when James calls back to him, “Hey, call me Bucky. If you want. My grandmother’s the only one who’s ever really called me James.”  
  
* * *  
  
It’s a full 24 hours before his encounter with Bucky on the road leads to Steve actually following through on the thought it had immediately sparked in him. He sits at his kitchen table, staring down at his phone. He picks it up and puts it back down three separate times before he finally growls in annoyance at himself and thumbs through his contacts to find the one he’s looking for.  
  
His heart thuds as it rings, and Sam answers on the fourth. “Steve,” he breathes.  
  
“Hey, Sam,” Steve croaks, unexpectedly emotional at the sound of his friend’s voice. It’s been over a year since he last heard it.  
  
Sam swears under his breath twice before continuing, “it’s so good to hear from you, man. I was gonna call you a bunch of times, but I know you wanted to be … anyway, at least now I know you haven’t been abducted by wolves.”  
  
Steve sniffs and squeezes his eyes together, and then jokes to break the tension. “You still don’t know that for sure. Maybe I’m calling from inside their den.”  
  
Sam does laugh, and it’s music to Steve’s ears. He always loved Sam’s laugh, almost more than anything else about him, except for maybe his fierce loyalty. “Should I send help?”  
  
“No,” Steve chuckles. “How, uh … have you been? How’s the station?”  
  
“Good, we’re all good. We miss you, am I allowed to say that?”  
  
“‘Course you are. I miss you guys, too.”  
  
“What’s it like up there?”  
  
“Pretty much exactly like you’d imagine.” Steve leans back in his chair and drapes his free arm across his middle. “Nothing but trees for miles. And snow.”  
  
“And bears.”  
  
“And bears,” Steve agrees, “but they aren’t really an issue as long as you don’t leave garbage out where they can get to it.”  
  
“Are you happy?” Sam asks, and it makes Steve’s throat close for a moment to hear the hopeful notes in his voice.  
  
He knows Sam remembers, as vividly as he does, the last fire. The one that left Steve with the scarring of burns all down the left side of his body and the clench of fury in his chest over how wrong everything had gone, and the ache somewhere even deeper for the ones he couldn’t pull out of it. The way Sam had screamed at him as he held Steve back when Steve had tried to dash back inside one last time, even as the roof collapsed. The fire that broke him, the one he couldn’t forget, as much as he’d tried. His stomach churns a little, as it always does every time he catches himself thinking about it before he can stop it.  
  
It would feel like a lie to go that far and he never lied to Sam in all the years they worked together, so Steve doesn’t, but he says, “it’s peaceful, here. Which is what I wanted.”  
  
“Alright.” He knows Sam can hear it all in his voice, but he’s a good friend and he doesn’t call Steve on it. “I’m glad to hear it.”  
  
“You could come visit, if you want. Not now, I know you hate the cold, and it’s pretty fuckin’ cold right now, but in the summer.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. We could go fishing, I bought a second-hand boat a few months ago.” He has no idea if Sam’s ever been fishing, or even camping. Steve himself had never been outside the city before he … well, before.  
  
“I’d really like that, Rogers.”  
  
Steve smiles.  
  
* * *  
  
A cold front blows in from the West, pelting his property with snow that whips furiously through the trees and gathers in mounds against Steve’s cabin. He has to dig himself out, on a frigid Wednesday morning, through a drift that makes his front door impassible. There’s something deeply invigorating about it, and even though he’s sweating by the time he’s cleared a path so he can at least make it around back to the woodshed, he feels alive and capable and clear-headed.  
  
As he’s gathering an armful of logs to deposit next to the woodstove to keep it running the rest of the day, in the distance he hears a loud crack, followed by a few more and then a male voice swearing. Steve frowns. The voice didn’t sound particularly distressed, but he dumps the logs back onto the pile and goes to investigate anyway. He’s a helper, it’s a part of his personality that’s always been there and that he can’t seem to shake even out here in the wilderness almost entirely by himself.  
  
Near the marker of Steve’s property line, he sees Bucky, in clunky winter boots and a thick coat, with an axe in his hand and a frustrated look on his face. His hair is wild, sticking to the sheen of sweat on his forehead. For just a second, just the space of a heartbeat, Steve is struck with the urge to brush it off his face.  
  
Bucky hears him coming, his footsteps in the snow loud in the otherwise quiet of the woods. He blows out a breath of annoyance as Steve approaches, and before Steve can initiate a conversation he huffs, “I’m fine, sorry, didn’t mean to make you think I was being attacked or something.”  
  
“I’m glad you’re not,” Steve replies. He looks down at the ground between them, and the fallen tree Bucky is clearly trying to hack into manageable sections, and hesitates. The inside of his cheek makes its way back between his molars, and when he looks back up, Bucky is looking back at him with a knowing expression on his face.  
  
His _handsome_ face, Steve’s traitorous brain helpfully supplies. If he were in the presence of another, he might reach down and give himself a face-full of snow as punishment for that entirely unhelpful thought. It’s been years since Steve’s been with anybody, giving up almost entirely on dating when he realized how incompatible it was with his job and lifestyle, and he certainly wasn’t expecting to meet someone in the middle of absolutely nowhere. He’s content, being alone. He always has been. But maybe it’s been too long, maybe he’s finally starting to crack.  
  
“You can ask,” Bucky tells him, in a flat, accepting voice.  
  
Steve frowns. “Ask what?”  
  
“I know that look.” Bucky points to Steve’s face with the axe in his hand, hovering momentarily in the air between them before he drops it back down to his side. “You’re wanting to ask if I need help, but not wanting to imply I’m helpless because you think that’ll piss me off.”  
  
Steve doesn’t answer immediately. The assessment certainly isn’t incorrect, and he isn’t sure how to say that without making it worse.  
  
Bucky holds the axe up again, this time in a way that communicates he’s handing it over. “It’s fine. I could use some help, thanks.”  
  
“Oh. Okay, yeah, no problem,” Steve says quickly. He steps forward and takes the axe, the fingertips of his own thick glove bumping against Bucky’s as it’s transferred between them.  
  
Bucky wipes at his brow with the back of his wrist as Steve grips the tool and takes over for him, chopping the trunk into smaller logs with a few swift, precise swings.  
  
“Two months, since I lost the arm,” Bucky says, when the job is done, even though Steve hadn’t asked. “I know you were wondering that, too. I will get the hang of this shit, I just haven’t, yet.”  
  
“Right.” Steve presses his lips together and nods slows. “That – I mean it has to be frustrating, having to relearn how to do … everything.”  
  
“At least I was right-handed.”  
  
Breathing slowly and wincing internally, Steve asks, “they said that to you, didn’t they?”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“I don’t know, whoever. Doctors, physical therapists. Someone trying to force you to be grateful it hadn’t been worse, when what you really needed was to be allowed to be miserable.”  
  
Bucky’s watching him with a lightly furrowed brow and a gleam in his blue eyes, one that Steve recognizes as easily as he’d recognized Bucky’s parroted placating words.  
  
He drops the axe into the snow and pulls off his gloves, pushing the sleeve of his jacket up as much as he can on his left arm before it bunches just below the elbow and won’t go any further. He holds his forearm out, skin tightening in reaction to the sudden cold, and shows Bucky the scarring. Twisted ridges of his skin that begin on the back of his palm, redder than the rest of him and still a little shiny even though it isn’t exactly a new injury.  
  
“It goes up the rest of the way, too. And down my leg,” Steve says quietly. “It was months and a lot of P.T. before I could use my hand again. And when I was in a hospital getting a sponge bath that felt like acid instead of water, trying not to scream, a nurse told me _at least you’re right-handed_. As if that was supposed to erase everything.”  
  
Bucky’s eyes are fixed on Steve’s skin, shining in the low light as he blinks rapidly a few times. He steps forward, almost as if in a trance, and holds his gloved-hand out, just for a second, as if he’s going to touch Steve. He thinks the better of it before he makes contact, and drops his hand. He blinks again and looks back up at Steve with his brow more furrowed than it was a moment ago.  
  
“It was a surgeon,” he says, “for me. At the base.”  
  
“Fuck him,” Steve says, warming inside when Bucky’s mouth curves into a small smile.  
  
“Yeah,” he agrees, nodding minutely. “You’re right. Fuck both of them.”  
  
“Let me help you carry this back.” Steve gestures at the wood pile next to his foot, and Bucky nods his agreement.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
* * *  
  
He gives Bucky his number, and a week later he gets a text from him, inviting Steve over to watch a movie.  
  
_If you want_ , it says, and Steve can picture the exact shade of sheepish crimson Bucky’s cheeks would be if he were asking in person, the exact nonchalance, feigned or otherwise, that would echo in the casual wave of his hand. _If not that’s fine, ignore me_.  
  
Steve answers immediately. _I’ll bring the popcorn_ 😊 _._  
  
He’s been inside the Starks’ cabin but only once, in July, when Howard had been out fishing and Maria had needed help getting a fan down from their attic. It’s bigger than Steve’s place but not by much, and decorated as if by somebody’s grandma – which, Steve supposes, it was. They have a granddaughter, although he can’t remember her name at the moment. He’d seen her over the summer, swimming out to their floating dock in the middle of the bay and jumping off over and over and over, shrieking in happiness.  
  
Dressed in a cozy-looking knitted sweater, Bucky joins Steve on the couch as he turns the television on, even though there are sofa chairs. They aren’t touching, but close enough that Steve can feel his heat and smell him a little, and he curls his hands into fists and clenches his jaw and has a hell of a time paying attention to the movie.  
  
* * *  
  
Steve watches a lot of movies, because there isn’t a whole lot to do out here on long, dark winter nights, but it’s a nice change to have someone to watch them with. Someone to discuss plot points, and argue about twist endings, and share in laughs. It quickly becomes something they do, without ever talking about it or formally acknowledging it. Every two or three days, one of them texts the other, and they end up on somebody’s couch with various snacks, working through Netflix categories and the Starks’ extensive collection of DVDs. Steve finds, perhaps to his own surprise, he doesn’t mind the company. He doesn’t mind it at all.  
  
* * *  
  
On Christmas Eve, Steve wakes up shivering. It’s the first thing he notices, the way his muscles ache from clenching and his skin prickles in uncomfortable goosebumps. The second thing he notices is the smell of smoke.  
  
He gasps, drawing a painfully fast breath in through his nose and launches himself out of bed, skidding along the wood floor in his socks as he dashes into the main room of the cabin. He can barely see through the haze of it, coughing and waving a hand in front of his face in a futile attempt to clear it away, and why the _fuck_ his smoke-alarms hadn’t gone off he has no idea, and races around, frantic, looking for the source of it all. After a thorough search he discovers no fire, even in the one place there should be fire – the woodstove. The flames are long-extinguished and instead acrid smoke billows from it, sending ash floating through the air around him.  
  
Flashes of things he struggles to forget at the best of times play behind his eyelids, and Steve bangs the heel of his palm into his forehead harshly, trying to knock them loose from his brain.  
  
“Steve? Steve!”  
  
He looks up, choking on the air he tries to pull into his lungs, as someone hammers desperately at his door from the outside.  
  
“I’m okay!” Steve manages to call back, coughing painfully around the words. He feels his way to the door, stubbing his toe on a chair leg but managing no to trip over anything, and unlocks the door so he can pull it open.  
  
Bucky is on the other side, along with a blast of icy air, and he grabs Steve by the front of his sweatshirt in an instant and drags him outside onto the deck. The wood is bitingly cold on Steve’s feet through thin socks.  
  
“Fuck,” Bucky swears, brushing soot off Steve’s shoulders. “Did you put it out?”  
  
Steve coughs again, bending over with the force of it and trying to draw clean, outside air into his lungs. “There’s no fire,” he forces out around the hacking. “Something wrong with my woodstove, something stuck in the flue I think.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
Steve nods. “I’m sure.”  
  
Bucky swears again, breathlessly this time. “Jesus, I thought … I stepped out onto my deck and there was this cloud of smoke over the trees, I thought your whole place must’ve burned down. You sure you’re okay?”  
  
“Yeah.” Steve takes a few more deep breaths, able to do it without coughing now. He looks into Bucky’s worried gaze, his eyes shining and his eyebrows drawn together. “Thanks.”  
  
“You know, I moved out here to get away from shit like this,” Bucky says, and Steve winces just for a moment before he notices the twinkle in those bright blue eyes and realizes he’s joking.  
  
“Yeah, so did I,” Steve returns, laughing in spite of himself and shaking his head.  
  
Bucky smiles at him and laughs, too. “So, do you know how to fix it? Whatever’s wrong?”  
  
“I don’t know. There’s some kind of tool, probably, a brush to clean it out. I don’t have one, though, and …” he closes his eyes, realizing, “the hardware store won’t be open on Christmas Eve.”  
  
“Maybe there’s an inn you can stay at, in the stables or something,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs again. Bucky pats his arm. “C’mon. Let’s open some windows and get this smoke cleared out. You can stay with me tonight.”  
  
Steve nods gratefully, and follows Bucky back into his hazy living room. The flashes are still there behind his eyes as he breathes in the smell of smoke, but a little less vivid than they were before.  
  
Bucky fans through the air with a dishtowel while Steve shoves some clothes and toiletries into a backpack, and once the smoke has mostly dissipated they make the trek back to Bucky’s place. He lets Steve shower, scrubbing the smoke and ash from his hair and skin, and has coffee brewing and bacon sizzling on the stove when Steve emerges from the bathroom. It’s a much nicer aroma to step into than the one he woke up with, and Steve smiles at him gratefully. Bucky smiles back, and the apples of his cheeks turn pink.  
  
* * *  
  
“Elf or Diehard?” Bucky asks, holding both DVDs up in his hand, fanned out so Steve can see them.  
  
Steve snorts. “Are you one of those people who thinks Diehard is a Christmas movie?”  
  
“Excuse me, Diehard _is_ a Christmas movie,” Bucky says, “and this is my house so we will not be debating that.”  
  
“Technically it’s – ”  
  
“ _Technically_ fuck you,” Bucky interrupts, grinning widely and shaking his head so his hair bounces around his sharp jawline. “Does that mean you’re choosing Elf?”  
  
“Both,” Steve decides. “Elf first.”  
  
“Deal.” Bucky busies himself with removing the disk and inserting it into the player, and Steve brings two glasses of whiskey and ice over and sets them on the coffee table.  
  
He makes himself comfortable on the couch and Bucky bounds over to join him, so drastically different these days than the sullen, threatening man Steve had met six weeks ago that it seems almost inconceivable it’s the same person.  
  
Bucky holds his glass out as the movie begins, and Steve knocks his against it gently. “Cheers,” Bucky says with a smile. “Merry Christmas Eve, Stevie.”  
  
He raises an eyebrow. “Stevie?”  
  
“Oh, should I not –?”  
  
Steve shakes his head quickly. “No, it’s fine. I like it. I’ve never had a nickname before.”  
  
“Isn’t _Steve_ short for Steven?”  
  
“Well, yes, but that’s just a shortened version of my name. I mean a nickname that’s …” _Affectionate_ , is what he wants to stay, but he stops just short of it. “Anyway, point is, I like it.”  
  
“Good.” Bucky winks playfully at him and settles in, much closer than he had the last time they’d done this. They still aren’t touching, but almost. Almost.  
  
Exhaling slowly, trying to let it calm him, Steve turns his attention to the screen.  
  
Twenty minutes into the movie, Bucky laughs out loud. It’s a nice laugh, Steve things, bright and joyful. He leans forward with the force of it, and when he collapses back against the cushions, their shoulders brush. Steve squeezes his molars together and doesn’t move, caught right halfway between wanting to lean in further and wanting to remain perfectly still for fear that if he moves an inch Bucky might move away.  
  
He smells nice. Like wood and leather and manly soap. Steve’s head spins, and he loses track of the movie completely, instead paying rapt attention to the dramatic thudding of his own heart and worrying that Bucky will be able to hear it.  
  
Bucky sings along, softly and under his breath, as Buddy on the screen sings along with Jovie’s shower-rendition of _Baby It’s Cold Outside_. As he’s snickering when she realizes she isn’t alone in the bathroom and starts shrieking, Bucky’s hand slips down off his thigh and lands in the space between them, the backs of his fingers against Steve’s.  
  
Steve’s heart skips a beat, or maybe two or three. Hardly daring to breathe, he moves his fingers, not away but against Bucky’s skin, just the smallest hint of a brush. He doesn’t look away from the screen but every inch of him blooms in warmth as Bucky’s fingers brush back before his hand slips into Steve’s.  
  
In the movie, Jovie is explaining that she doesn’t sing in front of other people and Buddy is earnestly telling her she has a beautiful voice. The tip of Bucky’s forefinger rubs lightly along Steve’s knuckle, a deliberate motion that can’t be absentminded. Steve chews at his bottom lip and tingles everywhere. He’d nearly forgotten what this feels like, and even this small amount of touch sends a shiver down his spine.  
  
“Fuck it,” Bucky breathes suddenly. He pulls his hand out of Steve’s and stands, and before Steve knows what’s happening Bucky has plopped himself down into Steve’s lap and is kissing him, warm hand curled around the side of his neck, lips wet and insistent.  
  
Steve gasps into it, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s waist and tugging him closer, returning the kiss with enthusiasm, with pent-up energy and sparks of desire igniting in his chest after being dulled for so long. Bucky moves against him, restless as he slips his tongue into Steve’s mouth and moans at the sensation.  
  
He shudders through a breath when they break for air, his forehead resting against Steve’s as their chests heave.  
  
“Shit,” Steve supplies unhelpfully, laughing breathlessly, and Bucky laughs with him.  
  
“You want this, right?” Bucky asks, as if there could be any doubt left, but it’s kind that he asks as it makes Steve feel even warmer, for reasons beyond just arousal.  
  
“Yeah,” he answers. He slides one hand up Bucky’s back and into his hair, the strands soft between his fingers. “Yeah, I fuckin’ want this.”  
  
“Good.” Bucky kisses him again, somehow even more desperate than before, and Steve’s head spins.  
  
His hips roll, tilting himself forward so they’re pressed closer together, and Steve can feel him, hard in his sweatpants. A thrill ricochets through him and he grips Bucky tighter, tries to get him closer still. Bucky rocks into him, pressure and heat and a tiny pleased whimper spilling from his mouth that Steve swallows hungrily in another bruising kiss. He wants all of it, everything, so much he can barely think, but Bucky should know, it wouldn’t be fair to pretend Steve’s the sort of person who could do this and have it be meaningless. It wouldn’t be fair to pretend he’s just here for a good time when the truth that hits him hard in the chest is that he’s fallen for the man in his arms.  
  
“I haven’t, in a really long time,” he breathes against Bucky’s lips. “Just so you know.”  
  
Bucky exhales through his nose and his movements slow. He kisses Steve’s lips chastely, and then his cheek, and then the bridge of his nose. His eyes are shining when he sits back a little so they can look at each other. “I haven’t, either. I was overseas, and then …” he trails off, but tips his head toward his left side.  
  
Steve swallows thickly. He releases his grip on Bucky’s silky hair and slides his hand around to his shoulder, feeling the roundness of his shoulder underneath his t-shirt. “Can I see?” he asks, blinking up at Bucky.  
  
Bucky’s forehead is twisted into a frown but he nods, reaching between them for the hem of his t-shirt and pulling it easily up over his head and off. His chest is broad, smooth, skin a little darker than Steve’s is, brown nipples hardened to enticing points that Steve wants to get his mouth on. The scarring on his shoulder is so much fresher than Steve’s own, jagged edges where he’d been sewn back together zig-zagging along the otherwise unmarred expanse of his flesh.  
  
Steve catches himself before he sucks in a noisy breath, managing to avoid it just at the last second. He explores with his fingers again, the rough bumps underneath the pads of them, so similar to his own scarring and yet different, in a way he couldn’t define if he had to articulate it out loud.  
  
“You’re not allowed to feel sorry for me,” Bucky says quietly, and Steve shakes his head.  
  
Sincerely, he says, “I’m feeling a lot of things, but that isn’t one of them. Empathy, maybe. Not pity.”  
  
“Good.” Bucky licks his lips and his eyes search Steve’s face.  
  
Steve cups Bucky’s cheek in his hand and guides him down for another kiss, much softer than the last. “Would you tell me about it, some time?” he asks.  
  
“Some time, yeah.”  
  
“And maybe about why you don’t like surprises?” Steve doesn’t want to push, but, “I don’t ever wanna hurt you by accident.”  
  
“Some time,” Bucky repeats. “Not tonight. But I promise I will.”  
  
Steve loses himself in another few passes of their lips, and then he sits up enough to tug his own shirt off as well, revealing his own scars, glinting in the firelight. Bucky swallows, Steve both hears it and sees it move in his throat, and his fingers explore as Steve’s had, along knots and ridges.  
  
“A fire?”  
  
Steve nods. “The last one, before I … before I couldn’t, anymore.”  
  
“When you woke up this morning, that must’ve been …”  
  
“It was, yeah. I’m happy you were there.”  
  
Bucky’s eyes are misty when they connect again with Steve’s, and he chuckles softly as he rests their foreheads together again. “Can’t even get laid without getting all mushy.”  
  
Steve chuckles too, not knowing which of them Bucky is referring to because it could easily be either, or both. “I think I kinda figured … nobody would understand. But you do.”  
  
“I do,” Bucky agrees.  
  
He trails his fingers down Bucky’s chest, thumbing over a nipple and smiling to himself as Bucky shivers, pausing at the waistband of Bucky’s pants where he’s still straining inside against them, despite the heaviness that’s settled over the two of them. Steve wants to touch him more than anything, desire coursing through him.  
  
“Still want this?” Steve asks.  
  
Bucky kisses him, whispers, “fuck yes,” and sticks his tongue back into Steve’s mouth as Steve slides his hand into Bucky’s sweats.  
  
* * *  
  
He wakes up slowly, to the sound of birds chirping and the glow of sunlight through his eyelids. He’s warm and comfortable, and there’s something soft spread against his mouth and nose. When he inhales it smells like warm skin and earth. Hair, he realizes, and he’s smiling before he even opens his eyes.  
  
“Merry Christmas,” is whispered against the hollow of his throat, followed by the damp press of a kiss.  
  
Steve returns it, stretching minutely and then wrapping his arms more securely around the body against him.  
  
“Sleep okay?”  
  
“Yeah. Really good.” Steve smiles with his eyes closed, turning his nose further into Bucky’s hair and inhaling him deeper. There is a leg tucked between his own and an arm draped across his middle. It feels familiar even though it’s not, and intimate in a way that has something content dancing languidly in Steve’s chest. He hadn’t noticed himself missing this, all these years – and maybe even, he thinks with a small tendril of hope, _this_ is something he’s never quite had before. It feels like it could be.  
  
Bucky doesn’t speak for a moment, so Steve opens his eyes and nudges Bucky’s forehead with his nose, whispering, “hey.”  
  
Bucky tilts his head back to look at him, and returns the smile Steve gives him. He sighs happily into the kiss Steve presses to his lips.  
  
“Good morning,” Steve murmurs. “I had fun last night.”  
  
“Me too.”  
  
“I, um,” Steve exhales in a way that feels careful, but then lays it bare anyway because he wants to feel brave enough to say it, “I’m glad we found each other.”  
  
“Me too,” Bucky repeats, sounding relieved.  
  
He kisses Steve again, the movement of his leg between Steve’s stirring something within him, and Steve rolls them over with a happy growl so he can settle on top, deepening the kiss as they move together.  
  
“Y’know,” Bucky muses conversationally as his hand slides down Steve’s spine and squeezes a handful of his ass, “the hardware store isn’t gonna be open today, either. Maybe not even tomorrow.”  
  
“Mm,” Steve hums. “Guess I’m just gonna have to stay here.”  
  
“I guess you are,” Bucky returns, smiling brightly up at him before Steve kisses him again.  
  
* * *  
  
The hardware store in town is open on the 26th. Steve speaks to Tracy, the owner, and picks up a brush on a long handle and some stern advice on regular maintenance. Steve doesn’t mention he’s a former firefighter, because he’s highly embarrassed by that additional weight added to his failure, and leaves the shop with his metaphorical tail between his legs but thankful that at least he’ll be able to fix it and keep it from happening it again.  
  
When he gets home, he stands in the entrance to his dirty cabin, surveying the damage – none of it permanent, but all of it painting an immediate future filled with cleaning. He hovers there looking at it for less than a minute, before he drops the brush down onto a dusty kitchen counter and heads for his bedroom. He dumps out the clothes he’d worn the last two days at Bucky’s, refills it with fresh ones, and heads back.  
  
Bucky opens the door with a surprised wrinkle on his forehead. Steve doesn’t say anything, but Bucky sees his backpack and smiles, stepping wordlessly out of the way to let him back in.  
  
* * *  
  
The gentle breeze sends ripples along the royal blue of the water in front of him. The bay is sheltered, but the warm June wind still churns the surface of the lake, the reflection of fluffy clouds in the sky dancing in the water. High overhead a flock of pelicans soars and Steve tilts his head back to look at them, massive and white and prehistoric in their shape. The sun is high in the sky already even though it’s still early, and the chatter of squirrels punctures the stillness of the woods around him.  
  
Steve stretches his legs out in front of him and then sets his bare feet back down onto the wooden planks of the dock, shifting in his deck chair to a more comfortable position. Solitude, is the reason he moved here. And peace. He’d wanted to run from everything he knew, he wanted to set up camp in the middle of nowhere and never speak to another human being again. He’d thought that was what he needed, what would make him, if not _happy_ , at least satisfied enough to carry on.  
  
He’d been wrong.  
  
“Morning,” a voice says behind him.  
  
Steve smiles as an arm wraps around him, Bucky leaning over to press a kiss to the top of Steve’s head and then bury his forehead in the junction of Steve’s shoulder. Steve reaches back, tangling his fingers in Bucky’s hair. Bucky’s lips find his neck, and then Steve tugs at him gently so he can slide their mouths together in a warm, good-morning kiss.  
  
“Hi, honey,” he murmurs.  
  
Bucky reaches around him and takes the coffee mug from Steve’s hand, stealing it and sipping from it. Steve doesn’t mind.  
  
There are sudden, rapid footsteps moving toward them, and Sam in neon pink swim trunks races past them and hurls himself off the end of the dock, curling his body into a ball before he plunges dramatically into the lake.  
  
Bucky snorts as he laughs.  
  
Sam shouts loudly as he pops back up, reacting to the water temperature. In a month it will be as warm as a bath, but for now it’s still chilly. “C-come on in, the w-water’s great!” he calls to them, utterly failing to stop the chattering of his teeth.  
  
“Oh yeah, sure sounds like it!” Bucky calls back, laughing again.  
  
He sets the mug down on the dock and moves around Steve, dropping himself down into Steve’s lap and curling into him, head on Steve’s shoulder.  
  
“I like it better here,” Bucky says.  
  
Steve slides his arms around Bucky, holding him close, and smiles until his cheeks hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> Come talk to me [on tumblr](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/) if you want!
> 
> In case anyone is interested the town close to Steve's cabin is Sioux Narrows, Ontario. All the places, businesses, and people I've mentioned are based on real ones.


End file.
